Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Friday March 17 2017, @05:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the encrypt-for-the-win dept.

How do you destroy an SSD?

First, let's focus on some "dont's." These are tried and true methods used to make sure that your data is unrecoverable from spinning hard disk drives. But these don't carry over to the SSD world.

Degaussing – applying a very strong magnet – has been an accepted method for erasing data off of magnetic media like spinning hard drives for decades. But it doesn't work on SSDs. SSDs don't store data magnetically, so applying a strong magnetic field won't do anything.

Spinning hard drives are also susceptible to physical damage, so some folks take a hammer and nail or even a drill to the hard drive and pound holes through the top. That's an almost surefire way to make sure your data won't be read by anyone else. But inside an SSD chassis that looks like a 2.5-inch hard disk drive is actually just a series of memory chips. Drilling holes into the case may not do much, or may only damage a few of the chips. So that's off the table too.

Erasing free space or reformatting a drive by rewriting it zeroes is an effective way to clear data off on a hard drive, but not so much on an SSD. In fact, in a recent update to its Mac Disk Utility, Apple removed the secure erase feature altogether because they say it isn't necessary. So what's the best way to make sure your data is unrecoverable?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:33PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:33PM (#480385)

    I try to encrypt most of my drives, but regardless of encryption or not when erasing an SSD I first write random data to the whole drive, then I do an ATA secure erase with hdparm, which in theory (unless the controller cheats, and documentation is lacking) will erase all data including that in the inaccessible wear-leveling areas. That's good enough for me, but if you want to get better than that then physical destruction of every single memory IC is the way to go.

  • (Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Friday March 17 2017, @02:05PM

    by SecurityGuy (1453) on Friday March 17 2017, @02:05PM (#480393)

    then I do an ATA secure erase with hdparm, which in theory (unless the controller cheats, and documentation is lacking) will erase all data including that in the inaccessible wear-leveling areas.

    I saw an interesting paper not to long ago that showed that some drives basically lied and didn't implement this in the way you'd hope.

    Personally, I'm considering physical destruction to be the only acceptable method going forward.